CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 139 



Lord and Master ? Yet the bold protector of his Master 

 and ours received only a rebuke : '' Put up thy sword 

 into its place/* Its place then was the scabbard, and if 

 its proper place was the scabbard then, it could never 

 again have any other proper place amongst the professing 

 followers of the Prince of Peace* 



Then, again, on another occasion, when two of the 

 disciples, one of them the gentlest and most lovable of 

 all, sought to call down fire from Heaven to consume a 

 Samaritan village which had refused to entertain the 

 Master, the suggestion met with a rebuke remarkable for 

 its severity : ^^ Ye know not what spirit ye are of/* 

 Two thousand years have passed away since then, and still 

 the professing followers of the Prince of Peace call for 

 fire and sword to consume their so-called enemies, 

 Alas ! that their ears are so dull of hearing, else surely 

 they would hear the stern rebuke of the Master, ** Ye 

 know not what spirit ye are of/* 



I have often heard it argued that if our Lord had 

 intended to forbid war He would have forbidden it more 

 explicity. But such was never His method. He did 

 not come into the world in order to introduce a new 

 code of laws which should supplement or supplant the 

 old. He came rather to offer for our acceptance a spirit 

 of love and universal brotherhood which should render 

 any such code of laws absolutely unnecessary. And 

 thus it was that when George Fox was asked to join the 

 Parliamentary army he did not answer, as he might have 

 done, that any such course of action was forbidden by 

 Scripture, though I think that this answer might well 

 have been defended by a far less able advocate than George 

 Fox, But his answer was deeper and more far-reaching 

 than that„ He lived, he said, ** in the virtue of that life 

 and power which takes away the occasion of all war,** 

 And truly, to such as live in the virtue of the life and power 

 of Jesus Christ, war is, and must be, impossible. 



